Probability coding is a technique for lossless data compression in data files. Huffman codes are one of the most popular probability codes, in which a set of symbols is ranked by their probability of occurrence. More frequently occurring symbols are assigned shorter code words, and less frequently occurring symbols are assigned longer code words.
Symbol distribution often includes local clusters of symbols that controvert the global symbol distribution. Further, modern computers include multiple processors or processors with multiple cores. These features are generally not exploited in Huffman codes.
Consequently, it would be advantageous if an apparatus existed that is suitable for producing and processing probability encoded signals to exploit local symbol clustering and multiple parallel processors.